Dear friends, Hope you are all well. By the time you read this I will be at home. Thank you very much for your prayers and kindly keep praying for me. Hope we don’t have any snow till I come back! I was reminded of something that happened when I was in the third grade. I was having my lunch with some of my friends. I saw a small, cute baby squirrel that was all alone running hither and thither. No wonder I was fascinated by that baby squirrel. So, I caught it and slid it in my pocket. I wanted to take it home and grow it. After catching the squirrel, my first and the last pet, I went to the class. As you may not know I was very mischievous when I was a little boy. Eventually, my teacher in the class for that particular hour caught me for some mischief in the class. The teacher was a nun. Now you would know what would have happened. Yes! She started to whack me with a stick she had. She was beating me on my thighs where the pocket was and the baby squirrel in. I was anxious that the squirrel should not be beaten. So, I held my hand against the pocket in order to protect the squirrel. All the beatings fell on my hand, palm and some just right on the joints. It was really painful. Despite the pain, I did not move my hand away for the fear that the squirrel would be getting the beatings and it may die. The teacher nun finally stopped beating me and I was relaxed. After the class I ran out to check if the squirrel was alive. Thank God! It was alive. I went home and after few days I realized that I can not rear the squirrel and so I let it go free. After a very long time when I was thinking about this incident I really could not help thinking about how God protects us all. For that small little squirrel, I was able to bear all the spankings to protect it. The pain and the agony were intolerable. But I could bear it all for the sake of the squirrel I found accidently. If I as a little boy can bear so much pain for that stray and estranged baby squirrel, how much more God would care for the people He himself created. His love, we can not measure. We can only understand that, if only we could be in His place. Even in our lives, we are ready to make any amount of sacrifice or lose anything, or bear any amount of pain or shame for something or someone we love. If that can be so, why don’t we hesitate to believe that God would love us more than we do? It is our faithlessness. We need to realize that the love and providence of God is more enormous than we could ever imagine. Let us try to understand and believe that. God bless.Yours sincerely,

Fr. A. Antony

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Pastor's ColumnPosted here is the weekly column featured in the bulletin of Saint Mary, Saint Michael & Saint Kilian parishes.